4 ms·

I don’t support exhaustive mono cropping, but without reading a book, is plants vs animals really the issue? You seem to have frame it as “land destroying plan

I don’t support exhaustive mono cropping, but without reading a book, is plants vs animals really the issue? You seem to have frame it as “land destroying plant only farming” vs “animal and land friendly mixed use” which seems like a false dichotomy. What’s wrong with plant based + rotating crops and sustainable use? (I eat meat, fwiw)

hx8 3y ago
The essential issue here is that for typical land you can produce more food with plants than you can with animals. Animals act as an extra 'processing' step for food production. Imagine the food chain for eating a plant vs eating an animal. The extra step is highly inefficient by a lot of metrics, but humans have a major diet preference for eating beef/pork/chicken. Plant -> Person Plant -> Farm Animal -> Human Edit: My goal is to explain the basics of the argument that the parent comment was unfamiliar with, not to advocate.
- alexeldeib 3y ago
  Err. I might be misunderstanding. Don’t you agree with my counter argument to GP? You’re saying animals are extra steps and I’m saying both plant alone or mixed use could be sustainable?
  - hx8 3y ago
    It really depends on a lot of other inputs. The word sustainable implies planning over centuries or longer, and we just don't know what the population will look like over time, or what their dietary preferences will be. These things change over time. There are worrying signs. Maybe the largest is the amount of deforestation happening to support the growing beef industry and feedstock for animal agriculture [0]. [0] https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/articles/what-are-the-biggest-drivers-of-tropical-deforestation https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/ar...
- petrocrat 3y ago
  The over simplification here is that not all plants are equal and not all soils and/or climes can support all plants. So for soils or climes that can only really grow "weeds" that are inedible to humans, if you put them through an animal (specifically a ruminant), then it converts biomass that is inedible to edible for humans. The effect of this on your diagrams is in diagram 2, with the intermediate farm animal, there are many situations in that scenario where the calories from those plants would be entirely lost, not simply rerouted losslessly to human consumption.
  - hx8 3y ago
    This is such small portion of all meat on the market, it really shouldn't factor into the discussion for how to feed a population.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - hollerith 3y ago
      You know this how? Have you done a calculation? It seems to me that there are many grassy hills that cannot be farmed using tractors and to farm them using hand tools is too labor-intensive.
      - hx8 3y ago
        That's a great question. It's actually hard to get this type of data. I once tried to calculate something adjacent by looking at feedstock production, but actually a lot of feedstock is used for 'biofuel'. My knowledge comes from exposure to the agricultural industry. You might be able to find some animals grazing on a grassy hill, but that doesn't scale. In addition, most NA climates don't support year long grazing.
wyldberry 3y ago
The issue is not plants vs animals. It's the messaging and misinformation around "plant/animal-based" terminology. People align very strongly one way or the other because of an intersection of morality with strongly held cultural beliefs. Then they advocate, one way or the other, and fund studies designed to show their outcomes. Food is a space very, very fraught with intentional misinformation. This fundamentally ignores a bunch of realities around land quality, thermodynamics, and nutrition bio-availability. Generally what's wrong with (everything in the nutrtition and fitness space) that the terms are overloaded to mean whatever it is the person speaking it deems at the time. Example: Paul Saladino (carnivoreMD) touts an animal based diet. Then when you dig into what he really recommends for eating is animal products + fruits and plants that have limited defense chemicals that can cause (for some people) disruptions in their life. The position i advocate for is regenerative agriculture where we sequester more carbon by using the animals to mimic the natural grazing cycles and provide fertilizer for plants. This is incredibly important because in order to produce crop yields like we do, we require massive amounts of fertilizer, which requires petroleum inputs to create which gets us back to thermodynamics. To do crop rotation appropriately in a sustainable way, you need ruminant animals. It's a complex topic that I invite everyone to spend some time taking a look at because there's really big money in meat production as well as artificial meat production that have a vested interest in winning you over.

hx8 3y ago

The essential issue here is that for typical land you can produce more food with plants than you can with animals. Animals act as an extra 'processing' step for food production. Imagine the food chain for eating a plant vs eating an animal. The extra step is highly inefficient by a lot of metrics, but humans have a major diet preference for eating beef/pork/chicken. Plant -> Person Plant -> Farm Animal -> Human Edit: My goal is to explain the basics of the argument that the parent comment was unfamiliar with, not to advocate.

alexeldeib 3y ago
Err. I might be misunderstanding. Don’t you agree with my counter argument to GP? You’re saying animals are extra steps and I’m saying both plant alone or mixed use could be sustainable?
- hx8 3y ago
  It really depends on a lot of other inputs. The word sustainable implies planning over centuries or longer, and we just don't know what the population will look like over time, or what their dietary preferences will be. These things change over time. There are worrying signs. Maybe the largest is the amount of deforestation happening to support the growing beef industry and feedstock for animal agriculture [0]. [0] https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/articles/what-are-the-biggest-drivers-of-tropical-deforestation https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2018/ar...
petrocrat 3y ago
The over simplification here is that not all plants are equal and not all soils and/or climes can support all plants. So for soils or climes that can only really grow "weeds" that are inedible to humans, if you put them through an animal (specifically a ruminant), then it converts biomass that is inedible to edible for humans. The effect of this on your diagrams is in diagram 2, with the intermediate farm animal, there are many situations in that scenario where the calories from those plants would be entirely lost, not simply rerouted losslessly to human consumption.
- hx8 3y ago
  This is such small portion of all meat on the market, it really shouldn't factor into the discussion for how to feed a population.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hollerith 3y ago
    You know this how? Have you done a calculation? It seems to me that there are many grassy hills that cannot be farmed using tractors and to farm them using hand tools is too labor-intensive.
    - hx8 3y ago
      That's a great question. It's actually hard to get this type of data. I once tried to calculate something adjacent by looking at feedstock production, but actually a lot of feedstock is used for 'biofuel'. My knowledge comes from exposure to the agricultural industry. You might be able to find some animals grazing on a grassy hill, but that doesn't scale. In addition, most NA climates don't support year long grazing.

wyldberry 3y ago

The issue is not plants vs animals. It's the messaging and misinformation around "plant/animal-based" terminology. People align very strongly one way or the other because of an intersection of morality with strongly held cultural beliefs. Then they advocate, one way or the other, and fund studies designed to show their outcomes. Food is a space very, very fraught with intentional misinformation. This fundamentally ignores a bunch of realities around land quality, thermodynamics, and nutrition bio-availability. Generally what's wrong with (everything in the nutrtition and fitness space) that the terms are overloaded to mean whatever it is the person speaking it deems at the time. Example: Paul Saladino (carnivoreMD) touts an animal based diet. Then when you dig into what he really recommends for eating is animal products + fruits and plants that have limited defense chemicals that can cause (for some people) disruptions in their life. The position i advocate for is regenerative agriculture where we sequester more carbon by using the animals to mimic the natural grazing cycles and provide fertilizer for plants. This is incredibly important because in order to produce crop yields like we do, we require massive amounts of fertilizer, which requires petroleum inputs to create which gets us back to thermodynamics. To do crop rotation appropriately in a sustainable way, you need ruminant animals. It's a complex topic that I invite everyone to spend some time taking a look at because there's really big money in meat production as well as artificial meat production that have a vested interest in winning you over.